5 WoW classes players want, how does Blizzard think theirs up?

I’d like to think that most of us who’ve
ever played video games have at some point dreamed of maybe altering or adding something
to it that’s awesome. Partly because it is awesome, but partly because
we thought of it. Take the World of Warcraft, for example. Threads and mockups and discussions are all
over about what would be a cool fantasy spec, or even class.

Hey it’s Soul, bringing to you the Word
of Warcraft. Today I’m going to explore some of that
creativity and talk about five of the more popular classes fans have dreamt up. Throughout this piece I’m going to touch
on some of the design challenges studios face when trying to bring in something disruptive
like a new class to an MMORPG. First off, the Necromancer. The chief concepts of the Necromancer lend
a lot of credit to the Diablo series. Bone spells, strong debuffs and of course,
controlling the undead fill out the repertoire of abilities at the Necromancer’s disposal. The theme fits well within the existing Warcraft
universe thanks to the likes of Kel’Thuzad and later, everything that involved the Lich
King.

The theme persists now thanks to the efforts
of Sylvanas Windrunner and the current Lich King. As a Diablo 2 fan, I would have been stoked
to play a Necromancer complete with a Iron Golem, and have some rotation of applying
debuffs, chucking bone spears and summoning legions of skeletons onto my enemies. There’re a few challenges to face, though.

One is that we’d probably end up with another
“pure” dps class. It’d be one thing if a necromancer existed
instead of a warlock, but in today’s WoW it’d be pretty cumbersome to put in two
or three more dps specs. An alternative approach would be to bake Necromancy
in as a spec or take some of these concepts and throw them across existing classes. Also with how the game is now, the abilities
of a possible necromancer concept are already spread across classes like the Death Knight
and Warlock. We’ve already seen certain skills of the
Warlock class get moved over to the current Demon Hunter class when they were introduced. Would players put up with Army of the Dead
being given to the Necromancer? At least Warlocks didn’t have a metamorphosis
ability at WoW’s launch. Taking away a Death Knight ability so iconic
that it’s on their own reveal video would rock that community. Of course we also have the Tinker.

The Tinker is probably the most widely talked
about fantasy class players have pushed. This class is heavily inspired or even lifted
from the Tinker hero from Warcraft 3, the last Warcraft RTS game that inspired the MMO. The Tinker is basically a class that incorporates
technology into its abilities. Throwing down turrets, activating gadgets
and robotic powersuits have been mentioned in suggestion forums and discussion threads
for years. And yet the idea’s never taken off. One often said reason is that the tinker already
exists in the form of the engineer profession. Just roll an engineer and use your imagination,
detractors would say.

I did. I so, definitely did. And it’s not enough. Another is that the Tinker just doesn’t
quite fit into the *World* of Warcraft. In the RTS the Tinker was merely a hero purchased
as a mercenary and had nothing to contribute to the greater story. At least off the top of my head I can’t
imagine an expansion theme that would introduce such a class. The Bard, as I’ll call it, is our third
class but beyond just being a Bard it’s about bringing in a full on support class
or spec into the game.

The bard is all about buffing allies and debuffing
enemies through the power of sex-song. SONG. The inspiration for this is derived from older
MMOS which do use support classes that mostly involve weakening enemies and slowing attacks,
provide a reasonable amount of healing and to strengthen allies, prevent damage or shorten
cooldown times. The challenge here is that since there is
no current support spec in WoW, a Bard like class would either become absolutely essential
to a team composition, or would be nearly worthless due to having to downplay their
potentially powerful abilities. Also, buffs and debuffs already do exist across
the several dozen specs that exist now.

There’s little doubt that like with the
Necromancer situation, discussions would come up regarding moving some buffs and debuffs
to the Bard specifically to provide uniqueness to the class and as a consequence, encourage
their use, and not everyone would be thrilled about feeling compelled to roll a Bard and
ultimately not do much to contribute to visible healing or damage metrics. One day ETC, you might become a class trainer. The Dark Ranger has been a popular mention
for a few reasons, not including these. Its inspiration started with Sylvanas Windrunner
along with her skills as a hero in Warcraft 3.

Skills like Dark Arrow that spawned skeletons
and Charm come to mind when thinking of its repertoire. It helps that Dark Rangers are also already
in the game too. The popular reasoning is also to break the
mold of never introducing a new ranged spec since WoW’s launch some 12 years ago. The challenge here is similar to the Necromancer
class - how do you introduce a class like this without stepping on the toes of other
classes? It’s good that this will fill a void left
by Survival Hunters but at the same time, a Hunter specced with shadow-themed abilities
isn’t too far fetched, either. A Dark Ranger is also a very Forsaken-themed
class. It’d be more challenging to create a Dark
Ranger-like class for the Alliance as opposed to for example, a Dark Hunter specialization
both factions can share and might be more easily written in.

Finally while there’s a lot of different
concepts out in the wild, there’s a pretty big desire for a ranged tanking class, and
that’s got even me interested. A ranged tank sounds neat in theory. It can work similar to a Hunter pet with growl
and tenacity traits, just well, better.

Or it can be one with the tank using a combination
of kiting and active mitigation skills if and when they start getting punched in the
face. One immediate challenge that comes to mind
is how this could change tanking paradigms altogether. One of several critical skills for a tank
is to quickly position or reposition their target in certain situations and this would
have to be handled the same way as a ranged tank. This would be pretty difficult for say, a
tanking pet. It would also create some disorienting or
even chaotic situations if the ranged tank is designed to kite often, leaving melee to
constantly chase their target, and there are a number of bosses that are stationary and
inflict huge damage on the raid if the tank isn’t within melee range. Off the top of my head, I can imagine a ranged
tank that leaves some sort of stationary astral form that takes blows and shares damage with
the tank’s real body, but the tank can quickly throw down a new form that automatically taunts
the target for quick repositioning.

This even opens up the idea of a tank of any
armor specialization if it’s a sort of caster tank. Just a thought. So those are five popular ideas from players
and throughout my short explanations I presented challenges these concepts face. In design, problems aren’t problems, they’re
challenges to overcome with reiteration and some clever engineering. I have my own idea of what WoW’s next class
can be, but I’ll talk about that in another video. First I’ll give you my thoughts on what
goes through the minds at Blizzard when it comes to creating a class. First thing’s first, there’s got to be
an inspiration based on the expansion this class will be released in, otherwise the introduction
of the class feels pasted in. Wrath of the Lich King brought us Death Knights
along with a narrative to their appearing all of a sudden.

The same happened with Monks in Mists of Pandaria
and Demon Hunters in Legion. We’ll have to look two expansions ahead
to even come up with an idea of a class that fits. This alone has been the most influential factor
of when to introduce a certain class, followed by if the team feels that it’s ready to
design the class to their liking. It’s been stated that the team wanted to
introduce Demon Hunters as early as the Burning Crusade but they didn’t feel quite ready
to bring it to life.

Personally while the Demon Hunter was a perfect
fit for Legion’s theme, I think that it was a mechanical blunder when it comes to
balance for the players. Demon Hunters bring a leather wearing melee
and tank spec to the mix, which means that since WoW’s launch, Blizzard gave us two
leather and two plate classes while giving us 4 melee, 3 tank, 1 healer and negative
1 ranged specializations. I think this is a bit imbalanced when it comes
to bringing fresh concepts. Before I knew the next expansion was going
to be Legion I fully expected a reasonable addition of a mail class that at least had
a ranged and healer specialization. With Legion I can’t see a great fit for
even a basic high level concept like that unless the narrative was altered. So this is probably a dumb idea but humor
me for a bit. Imagine if during the Broken Shore event,
we were sort of saved from total disaster by the new Lich King.

He sends new Necromancer agents to help out
and instead of Demon Hunters, this anti-Legion Scourge acts as the vanguard for the Legion
offensive. Meanwhile the Necromancer class is introduced,
a mail caster and healer. You know, your wounds are healed with the
uh, life giving power of undeath.

Sounds great! It’s hard to wipe out the memory of the
Illidan book, the Harbinger series and all the other snippets of media that helped bolster
the ideas of Illidan and the Demon Hunter class. They’re now fully cemented in Legion and
it’d be hard to talk anyone out of it, but it gives a glimpse of what Blizzard could
have done. So what class would you like to see sometime? Or if not a class, are you more interested
in adding more specializations to existing classes? As a fan and/or an armchair designer, what
would you bring to the table? Share your thoughts and this video, like and
subscribe, and Stay Breezy.

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